Add a new page

“My soul is tainted by my betrayal; I seek penance through blood and fire.”

Description and Background

Not many people deserve to live as a changeling, some people learn to enjoy it but no one deserves the sacrifice or the damage you take on the path to being one. Sometimes the lost make mistakes and they are forgiven or forgotten. Sometimes the mistake is so large that there is no forgiving it and no forgetting for anyone. These are crimes of infamy and deceit. Only the very worst kinds of lost would condone the existence of those who would do these things and on the off chance the offending lost isn’t just killed outright for his crime he is usually banished from the freehold. But there is a rare way out of that. Joining the Phantom Knights, one of the few entitlements that are not an honor the phantom knights live to seek battle and blood in penance for their crimes both real and imagined.

The Phantom knights were started by a lost known now as the King of Cracked Flames after he tried to lead his entire summer court against a fae known as Grandfather Rain in an attempt to save his spring king from the storm of the Fae’s existence. The battle was fierce and long and in the end only the King remained as the fae watched him having taken the entire freehold of Denver as punishment leaving only The Summer king to his shame and defeat. The King of Cracked Flames took what was left of his broken crown, a crystal crown made of glamour and flame. He broke it further and remade it as a mask to hide his face from the few lost who might remember him and took it upon himself as a holy quest to see Grandfather Rain killed. He never succeeded but in his travels to find allies to hunt down this great fae he found other lost who had committed crimes against their brethren. Broken beings clothed only in rags and shame. He instilled in them the only thing he had left, his pride as a warrior of the lost and he clothed them in prideful armor to lift them back up and gave them masks of shame to forever show the world what they are. They never succeeded in killing Grandfather Rain but they did end up founding a new noble order founded on broken things and dishonor.

Every Phantom knight is a banished creature and has a crime they must atone for. This is rarely ever accomplished and most knights die in battle with some hedge monstrosity. Most of the time atonement can only be accomplished by righting the wrong that started the banishment. If the knight sent other lost to the fae they must rescue them, if they betrayed there brothers on some quest and still failed they must not only finish the quest they must bring back its spoils and give them to the freehold in sacrifice. Whatever the task they must get the forgiveness from the entire court. If it is not earned they must take another quest and another until they have earned either succor or death. Death is most common

Titles: Phantom Knights, Phantom Lord (for those who have been at there quests for years or are especially powerful), Masked Knights, Shamed ones.

Joining: one of the few entitlements where you don’t need another lost to help you join. But only the most wretched of the Freeholds Traitors join the phantom knights. These men and women are dumped into the hedge deep into dangerous territory as punishment. Sometimes they are found by other phantom knights and are instructed on how to craft a mask for themselves, but most of the time they had heard stories of the lost knights and take it on themselves to join the quest for forgiveness. Very rarely will a lost in good standing join the Phantom knights but it has happened in the past. There are some rewards to being one of the accursed knights but very few.

Mask: Aside from the literal mask that all phantom knights wear they do in fact start to change subtly to suit their crime. Those who betrayed there friends causing death end up thin gaunt things with bloodstained hands. On the opposite end of the spectrum those who send other lost to the fae end up so glamour tainted by the mantle of the fae that they chose to side with that they start to take on traits of it. A fairest fae would make the knight a sickening beauty to look on, like a walking doll. A storm fae would cause the knight to be constantly wet like he stepped out of under heavy rain with lightning in his eyes and clouds in his lungs. This makes the knights look like a mismatched group. It also tends to make them look unhinged to others who don’t know who they are. The only sign of solidarity in the knights is the masks they wear. All phantom knights are required to wear a mask in public that they made themselves. The mask can take any form from the simple and plain to garish death masks. Some knights take the designed forms of Japanese Hanyas and others take pied masks from Italy. These masks are always hedge spun and made from random materials.
Requirements: wyrd 3, weaponry/brawl/firearms 3, previous good standing in the freehold. Aspiring members must also take on a quest that is generally suicidal (ST’s discretion on what constitutes suicidal)

Privileges:

The Mask of Shame: All phantom knights are required to craft a mask from hedge materials. While the mask can take any form the effect is always the same. While they wear the mask everyone knows that they are shamed creatures and only a great task will absolve them. The mask though grants 1 point of armor as the belief in it forms a magical barrier around the wearer. The mask can also grant intimidation bonuses against those who know what it means, who wants to fight against someone who has nothing to lose.
Cloak of Shame: Those who have succeeded in their initial quest but still haven’t earned the right reenter lost society are called the phantom Lords and there are very few of them for a good reason. Most phantom knights are suicidal. The lords are those who have seen that shame is not so easy to purge. They craft a hedgespun item that takes the place of a cloak for them. Sometimes it’s a literal cloak but other times it could be a weapon or armor. This item always gets a +1 to its hedgespun effect. (So a 1 dot hedge weapon would get +2 to dice instead of +1 from hedgespun bonuses) These items are rarely things of beauty and are made for function not form. Even if you made a bow from the bones of a star dragon its shine would be tainted and dark. A sword of moonlight would glow red with blood and taint. A cloak of phoenix feathers (why you would waste phoenix feathers on this is a mystery in and of itself) would hang with rot and burn with black fire.